


Falling in Orbit

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Depression is a bitch, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 05:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10960380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lance hates space. Lance loves space. Lance is... Lance. But what does that even mean?





	Falling in Orbit

Outside the window was a field of stars.

Part of him knew that even two months before, he would have been ecstatic at being so close to them. Part of him knew that a month ago he would have found peace in just watching them float past, icily brilliant in their unceasing glow.

Now, he hated them.

He hated how there was no atmosphere to make them flicker; to round off the edges of the almost-painful sharpness of the light. 

It wasn’t a burning hatred, or a deep loathing. 

No. 

He didn’t have the energy for that sort of hatred. This was different. Subtler. A murky, muddy river of disgust, flowing goopily through his heart and making it impossible for him to look at anything without an undercurrent of discontent.

No one else noticed anything, and Lance couldn’t be sure if he was relieved or angry that any cracks in the thin veneer of ‘happy guy’ were so easily brushed over. In the end, he decided, he didn’t care. It was taking all of his energy to keep up the front. He didn’t have any to spare for being upset that he was doing a good job at it.

It was fitting, he thought one day, that he was in space. You didn’t feel gravity in space, so no one noticed when he drifted around, falling into and out of orbits around the other paladins in an attempt to find something,  _ anything  _ that could ground him again. With Shiro he tried jokes, and meditation. Patience yields focus, and maybe a deeper connection to Blue would help him get his feet back under himself.

He meditated until he wanted to scream, but the only thing that changed was that now he could recognize the currents in the river that kept trying to pull him under. 

Self-loathing.

Despair.

Anger.

Fear.

Disgust.

Disappointment.

 

Lance quit meditation. He couldn’t look into the river any longer. Acknowledging it gave it power, and the more power it had the less he could resist the temptation to let it drag him down. He had to keep moving. He had to be  _ useful _ , somehow.

 

Hunk, at least, would put him to work, no matter where Lance found him. If it was the kitchen, Lance would be put to mixing things, or holding bowls, or chopping whatever esoteric ingredient Hunk was experimenting with this time. If it was his workshop, Hunk could be counted on to go on at length about whatever his current project was, or point Lance at some new piece of hardware that needed to be stress tested. Once, Hunk had taken one look at him and handed him something suspiciously like a sledgehammer and pointed him toward something that looked almost like one of the Galra Sentries. 

Lance was almost afraid to know what Hunk had seen on his face that day, but pounding the humanoid robot into so much scrap and dented metal had eased something that had been too tight for too long.

But sometimes the silences were too long, and he  _ knew _ that Hunk was about to ask something he really didn’t want to answer, and he always found some reason to get out of there before Hunk could ask.

Lance didn’t know  _ what _ Hunk was going to ask, but part of him was terrified that Hunk had seen something; that he knew  _ something _ was wrong, and was going to ask. And if he asked, Lance didn’t think he had it in him to lie.

 

Keith was simultaneously the best and worst person for him to be around. It was so  _ easy _ to fight with him. A word here, a grin there, a little bit of irreverence at the right time and  _ boom _ went Mount Saint Kogane. It was so  _ easy _ , and it actually helped. During a fight, the fog would clear. The river would clear, and he could  _ think _ . It was amazing, and Lance couldn’t help but grin even wider, relishing the angry flush on Keith’s face, or the way he’d get right up in his face, like proximity would prove his point  _ for _ him.

Lance hated himself afterwards.

The filth would rush back into the river, flooding it with slime and muck and he’d feel sick to his stomach; sure in the knowledge that he was worse than any scum on any world there ever was. How  _ could _ he do that to another person? How dare he use someone just to give himself a little clarity? He was a monster. He didn’t deserve to be around the others. Keith especially.

 

Sometimes, after a fight like that, Coran would find him. Lance wasn’t sure how; he didn’t really have a ‘place’ that he went when he felt like that. Unless he counted the darkest, most unoccupied parts of the castle. He usually just… let his feet move, and his brain float, and drifted along in a cloud of furious, exhausted, self loathing. 

Coran never seemed to notice his bleak mood, and Lance could never bring himself to be irritated about it for more than a few minutes. After all, Coran always had some  _ reason _ to be looking for him, and if it always ended up neatly distracting him from the fight, well. That was just a neat side effect, right? Even once Coran left, and his brain eventually circled back around to the fight it felt different. Lighter.

 

Pidge was… 

Pidge was.

There was a certain kinship there, Lance thought, watching Pidge through a fog of disinterest as xe gutted some random piece of technology xe’d picked up from their last trip to the Space Mall, tossing components over xer shoulder and muttering to xerself. 

Pidge could understand the itch under his skin. Driving him to do  _ something _ , but not telling him what it  _ was  _ that would appease it. Pidge knew the distant ache of not being enough; not doing enough. Of just  _ not enough. _

Lance tried not to rely on Pidge. Xe had xer own thing to deal with, and the best Lance could do was not add anything to the pile xe’d already taken on xerself. 

And if sometimes when Lance ducked into Pidge’s lab there was a fake bean bag chair, ready and waiting for him in a dimly lit corner, well. Lance wasn’t ungrateful for a place to just  _ be _ , and not have to be alone. 

Sometimes he’d come, then go, and there’d be something left behind. A mug of something that was almost cocoa. One of the few, precious candy bars. A pillow.

Neither of them ever said anything about it.

They didn’t have to.

 

Sometimes everything got to be too much, and Lance would just  _ go. _

Blue never denied him. She seemed to understand better than anyone, and somehow, Lance found that piloting her out of the castle and just drifting along in its wake quieted the distantly screaming part of his soul. It wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t helpful. But it was his, and he found an odd sort of peace floating in dead silence through space; his seat tilted as far back as he could get it so that he could almost lay down with his head on the seat and his legs over the shoulders. If he got the angle right, all he could see were the stars, and somehow, through Blue’s eyes, they almost seemed to twinkle.

And that was enough.

It had to be.

He was the Blue Paladin, after all.

 

_ fin _ .


End file.
